I've Almost Made it Through Another Summer

Summer is different things to different people. It used to be my favourite season. Mostly because of summer holidays, swimming at the lake or in pools, bikini babes, playing beerball, water sports, summer romance, cruising in the car in the cool of the night listening to tunes, camping in the woods, fishing my face off, eating about a dozen popsicles a day, barbecues, yearly family reunion at Christina Lake, sprinklers, golfing my face off, new summer music that will forever remind me of the fun I had during the summer it was new, seeing the new summer movies sometimes at the drive-in, skinny dipping and moon tanning, fresh fruit, the smell of Noxzema on sunburns, ball tournaments, cheering for the swim team, hunkering down in my sleeping bag listening to the rain tapping on my tent fly, waking up early for golf or fishing, Muskol, bonfires with lots of hot dogs and marshmallows, road trips on the bike, the smell of a freshly cut lawn, cutting the lawn, carnivals, roofing, peeling skin off my nose and ears, fresh veggies and cold cuts, painting, lawnchairs-especially the reclining kind, radios outside, enjoying the cool of the summer rain, seeing deer, bear and moose, washing the car, growing tomatoes, corn on the cob, playing cards and boozin' it up,

Okay, stop right there! I've finally mentioned something associated with summer here in Korea. I can play cards and booze it up. All the other things - nope. Now I know you're saying, "Come on! Stop exaggerating! You can fish, camp, go on bike rides, golf, play the radio outside, blah blah blah blah blah in Korea!" And, yes, some of those things you can but they are all so different, and in bad ways, that as near as makes no difference, NO, I can't. For some of these things the substitutes you get are so bad it's WORSE than the real thing. Like popsicles. How hard is it to freeze Kool Aid then sell it for about 40 times what it's worth to fools like me who will buy it? Nothing like that here. Corn on the cob here is the stuff we feed to livestock. The summer rain just adds to the humidity and actually makes it feel HOTTER here. There are plenty of hot dogs in Korea but I defy you to find a bun. Atkins followers are about the only people happy about that. And you have to be careful when you buy bread here to wrap around your weenies that you don't get the corn bread or the sweet kind that's closer to cake. Fishing, please! I wouldn't eat anything I caught if I could figure out the whacky ways they fish here and catch anything. Golf is about 200 bucks a round. There are no lakes you can swim in and if you go to the beach the girls are wearing one-piece swimsuits and three t-shirts with BRAS underneath. THIS year, and only in Seoul, is the very first year that foreigners can rent ball fields in Korea. No grass, no lawns, no sprinklers, no lawnchairs. The music is getting a bit better but you still don't wanna hear it. Riding a bike is taking your life in your hands. I could go on but I won't. You get the picture.

Still, I have a lot to be thankful for here in Korea. Well maybe I overreached. I have at least one thing to be thankful for: a good job. Well, okay we're getting closer. At least I have a better job than I can get in my own country. There. So if you're ever wondering why I'm here...

But wait. There ARE things I can do that I can't do back home. And those are the real things that keep me here. And I can take a little trip and find some of the things I miss about summer back in Canada too. I've said for years now that the best thing about living in Korea is the surrounding countries. Thailand, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and my favourite - the Philippines. I'm not leaving Korea till I've seen as much of these countries as I can. It would be a sin not to! The golfing is great in Thailand and CHEAP. You can't go anywhere without seeing a movie on a big screen. The fresh fruit is amazing too! You haven't been to Thailand till you've had the iced pineapple on the beach. And speaking of the beach, if you're at the right one the girls sometimes only wear HALF a bikini!

In the Phils I swim every day. Usually more than once. Snorkelling, water sports, barbecues and bonfires. No problem. They have good music. GREAT live bands. The girls are super cute and lots of fun. A summer romance in the Philippines is NOT out of the question. It's hard to know if the gal likes you or your wallet but there are few places I can think of better for boozin' it up so I'm usually feeling too good to care while I'm there! REAL hot dogs with buns at any Jolly Bee. Even fishing. I think I'll try that next time I go.

Unfortunately, this summer I'm stuck in Korea. I'm trying to make the best of it. I make potato salad but it's just not as good when I'm not sitting on a lawn chair trying to balance it on my knees on a paper plate with a broken plastic fork and a piece of charred animal flesh beside it.

Yesterday I went on a boat trip around the little Mokpo bay. It was pretty nice actually. Unfortunately I had to walk there because the place I work didn't care enough to offer me a ride, give me the number of a bus I could take or even tell me where and when it was. They just told me there was an "outing" some time on Saturday with the 50 teachers we've been teaching this past week. The other teachers tried to find out if I knew where I was going but they made the mistake of asking administration who will always in Korea be the bearers of news they assume you want to hear particularly if it's the news that requires no effort on their part. Regardless of whether it's the truth or not. They can always say, "I'm sorry" later.

This is a shot I took while I was searching for the teachers. This guy is fishing at the waterfront. See the little orange stick out front? That's his float. And the white things in the water are jellyfish. LOADS of them on this day.

But being a veteran of Korea I've been through this countless times and I know the foreign teachers are the last people to know what WE are supposed to be doing and it's usually only through our own devices that we can find out. I know that my main asset in Korea is not my amazing educational training, not my experience in a quality educational system, not my uncanny knack for improving every student's English ability while maintaining a casual and fun classroom atmosphere, it's making an incompetent administration look golden. More business than education. I always have to keep that in mind. And I did it again on Saturday. Against all odds, after an hour of looking, with an hour's worth of sweat soaked through shirt and shorts, and with a stone dead cell phone so nobody could call me at the last minute, I found the group and hooked up with them all for the harbour ferry trip. THIS is summer fun in Korea! But like I said, it actually WAS fun. I guess everything is relative.

These are the teachers when we first got on the ferry. That blonde is Jocelyn. She's a Nelson gal. The roof had a sprinkler system on it that was supposed to keep this area cool but it didn't.

This is the sprinkler system.

After the ferry tour we went out for "sam gyup sal" at a local restaurant. If you're in Mokpo go to "Ha Ru Ae" restaurant. FANTASTIC sam gyup sal. Although I've never met a sam gyup sal I didn't like. THIS is as close as I'll get to barbecue here this summer.

So I guess these'll be my summer pictures. Wow! Nothing like last summer! But here's hoping next summer will be better.